Bridgett M. Davis
Directing
Biography
Bridgett M. Davis is an American writer, teacher and independent filmmaker. Her memoir The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother's Life in the Detroit Numbers, was a New York Times Editors' Choice and was named a Best Book of 2019 by Kirkus Reviews. She is Professor of Journalism and the Writing Professions at Baruch College, City University of New York, where she teaches Creative, Film and Narrative Writing. Her feature film Naked Acts, about a young African-American actress who refuses to appear nude in a film, premiered in 1998 and has been widely screened internationally.
Known For
An aspiring actress has lost considerable weight to land her first movie role, but what the director didn’t tell her was that it includes a nude scene. Reluctant to do it, she embarks on a personal journey that unveils secrets once hidden under her weight, as she discovers emotional nudity is just as revealing as taking her clothes off.
Naked Acts
Elmore Leonard, author of more than 40 novels, is renowned in the literary community. From his westerns and early novels of crime based in Detroit and South Florida, right through his complex and virtually plotless later work, Elmore Leonard dissected an America whose founding sins have continued to haunt it all the days. Leonard’s depiction of America is as real as Twain’s Hannibal, Faulkner’s Mississippi and Steinbeck’s Monterey. The new documentary ELMORE LEONARD: “But don’t try to write” explores the prolific author’s legacy and his influence on generations of writers. The documentary features exclusive images and previously unseen home movie footage, family photographs, and in-depth interviews with both literary experts and those who knew him well, including colleagues, family, and childhood friends.
Elmore Leonard: "But Don't Try to Write"
Explores the careers of twenty black women working as film directors.
Sisters in Cinema
In 1958, the very same year that an unknown songwriter named Berry Gordy borrowed $800 to found Motown Records, a pretty young mother from Nashville, Tennessee, borrowed $100 from her brother to run a numbers racket out of her home. That woman was Fannie Davis, Bridgett M. Davis’s mother. Part bookie, part banker, mother, wife, and granddaughter of slaves, Fannie ran her numbers business for thirty-four years, doing what it took to survive in a legitimate business that just happened to be illegal. She created a loving, joyful home, sent her children to the best schools, bought them the best clothes, mothered them to the highest standard, and when the tragedy of urban life struck, soldiered on with her stated belief: “Dying is easy. Living takes guts.”
The World According To Fannie Davis
In this short narrative, a young woman moves to New York City from the Midwest in order to "develop her writing" and to share an apartment with her boyfriend. Distracted from her new creative life-style, she is soon challenged by her best friend to work harder to foster her own growth as an artist.